The other day a colleague sent me this *very official* document: http://www.whitehouse.org/espanol.asp Isn’t it wildly funny?. Especially amusing is when she says: “cuál madre presentaría a la barraca de la herramienta en una bandeja de la TELEVISION de bambú con una botella” Translators doing crack? Surprisingly enough, this piece of hilarious krypto-Spanish is in fact a tip of an iceberg: An iceberg of frozen Spanish thawing into the warmer oceans of English. Bi-lingual educators, technocrats, SYSTRANizers, and globalizators are in fact cooking the melting pot of the New Spanish. Immigration and technology are adding the final ingredients: Spanglish, niuyorrican, chicanoglés, TexMexano, español, castellano. Which one is “more” correct? The following taken from a training manual of a US bank: “Para recomputar el balanceo situado en firme, favor primero corra a el modulo de conteo de limpieza de cuenta” Actually meaning: “to recompute the outstanding balance, please run first the ‘clearing account’ accounting module” Just for fun, read this: http://orbita.starmedia.com/~sohail/menutur.htm. Now which one is more funny Mrs. Arbusto’s or the Gallego’s menu? Jokes apart, this mega-trend of the New Spanish, is seriously harming the translation business and of course **your rates**. Is the White House contributing to the end of Spanish? Or: Is in fact a mischievous scheme to push down translator’s rates by using BABELfishers? Tell me what you think. And have fun reading the links!.

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I would have thought the \"President Bush begins each day at the crack of nine o\'clock kneeling on the floor of the Oval Office in his Batman flannel feety-pajamas, holding hands with a group of Christian men.\" on the prayer warrior page would be a dead giveaway.

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xxxTransOl English to Spanish + ...

TOPIC STARTER

Yes *I know* it is a parody !!!

Jan 28, 2002

But: What about the REAL TREND on the evolution of Spanish? This is what I really mean. Too bad that IRONY, rethoric, and sophistic are not taught in the schools anymore!!

Read carefully and you will understand my point. Do not let the funny side of my posting shadow your understanding.

Thanks.

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It is true that the whitehouse.org site is bogus, but the translations at the real White House site (www.whitehouse.gov), though better than the example given, are a bit on the pedestrian side. You can find things such as: \"discursos radial del Presidente\" \"aumento de pago\" \"debemos tomar acción\" \"Todas las visitas son significativamente realzadas si los visitantes pasan por el Centro de Visitantes de la Casa Blanca\" \"Los oficiales de visitas están estacionados (stationed) por toda la casa para responder preguntas.\"

Or maybe I\'m just picky, though

[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-01-29 13:09 ]

[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-01-29 13:11 ]

[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-01-29 13:15 ]

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Pilar T. BayleLocal time: 22:47 English to Spanish + ...

Bush's Spanish...

Feb 22, 2002

When the election campaign was going full blast in the USA, I started checking Bush and Gore\'s sites, to see what their promises were (besides hot air). I saw both of them had Spanish versions of their sites, so I started checking them out of curiosity. Gore\'s Spanish was OK, on the limp side, but OK. Bush\'s was... A pile of crap. So, I wrote a long e-mail to the contact address, pulling some of the errors and offering my services as translator... Still waiting! I guess he won\'t write now that he is president.

Un saludito a todos,

P.

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I did think of writing a mail to the WH with comments about their Spanish translation and if they wouldn\'t prefer a real translator to do the job. But I took for granted that they would not bother to answer.

I suppose the texts are translated by secretaries or interns, as they do in really cheapskate companies. But it is the White House we are talking about, not just any old five-and-dime.

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